


Troubleshoot

by Anticipatio



Series: He's My Collar [3]
Category: Campaign (Podcast), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Biology, Asphyxiation, Awkward Sexual Situations, Cybernetics, Dom/sub, Fondling, Groping, M/M, Manhandling, Nervousness, Power Dynamics, Power Exchange, Power Play, Safe Sane and Consensual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 00:40:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anticipatio/pseuds/Anticipatio
Summary: Fixing Zero up was something he and Blue had done for a very long time. It's going to be different now that they're fucking, though.





	Troubleshoot

Diagnostics was a normal routine for Blue and Zero. After all, Blue had to make sure his bodyguard was at peak efficiency to perform an entertaining variety of just and unjust killings at a moment’s notice, and Zero had to make sure that none of his vital systems would cut out at inconvenient times and cause him to die of total organ failure. They would stay up late into the night, tinkering and complaining and readjusting and gossiping. For how unusual their relationship to one another and positions in the empire were, it was refreshing to do something relatively normal together without worrying about appearances and rivalries.

It’s the only reason they would ever have considered each other friends in the first place. A then-fifteen-year-old Adnau Wrengan, heir to the Barony of Mandalore, was insistent on a “strictly professional” relationship because he was “going to be important” and didn’t want to be “jeopardized by informal attachments.” It was fine with Zero, at the time. He didn’t take long-term contracts to make friends, especially with a royal brat whose voice cracked every other word of his long rambles. But then the module that controlled stability in his left arm had gone on the fritz, and there wasn’t a slicer on Mandalore that would be familiar with how gank machinery worked. He requested transport off world and was met with a confused and indignant stare.

Adnau hadn’t been familiar with the systems he had been using, but quickly recognized the patterns. With a few aborted attempts resulting in a variety of errors ranging from total limb failure to full body tremors, he had been able to calibrate the faulty system to an impressive degree. It became a monthly ritual after that, slowly dissolving the walls Zero put up against the young noble and vice versa.

It was still a running joke that their relationship was entirely professional, with Zero usually insistent this time around. Even when his assertions on the nature of his friendship with his employee were shot down, there was always still the slightest quirk of genuine amusement on Blue’s lip.

So, diagnostics weren’t new. Diagnostics under the current circumstances, though, was another bantha entirely. Blue was still working diligently, with datapads jacked into physical ports across Zero’s body—his jumpsuit was rolled up to his thighs and shoulders, despite the various connections accessible without stripping down—and drinking caf like it was water. There was an unusual amount of hesitance with his actions, though, and it was obvious that he was clearly remembering some of the more domestic details from the letter that started this whole scandal-worthy affair. It was also clear that he was not going to take initiative. Whether that was from a fear of overstepping some boundaries or from being unsure how to, Zero didn’t know, but he intended to ease the tension emitting from Blue before the poor thing exploded. 

Zero leaned forward with purposefully casual body language, elbows on knees and limbs relaxed. His faceplate displayed a lazily blinking pinprick of light over where his cybernetic eye was, and he quirked his head in feigned curiosity. It took a few moments for Blue to notice the change in posture from where he sat back on his heels, typing away on a pad wired into a knee joint. He slowly looked up from underneath the opacity of his glasses and raised a brow, silent.

“Yannow,” Zero started, delighted in the way Blue jumped slightly where he sat, “I’m always a little sore after you’ve applied a lot of patches.” There was another long silence, where the minister darted his eyes between where he was typing and where the wires fit into Zero’s body. He nervously tapped a few more lines of code and glanced away, “I’m sure you are, with how many big fixes you need after performing frankly unnecessary feats.” The anxiety didn’t leave his posture, but his eyes darkened slightly, and he slowly blinked up through his shockingly bright lashes, “Was there something you needed me to do about it?”

There it was. Probing curiosity had been Blue’s specialty as he plotted his way to his position, but he had since grown brasher and more decisive with the acquisition of power. Zero displayed a pleasant little cartoonish smile across his faceplate with a matching set of closed, grinning eyes. “Well, while we’re here, you should massage away some of the pain.”

Whatever tweak Blue applied to his knee made the ache of an overextended muscle dissipate to be replaced with a bit of fuzzy static feeling as his body adjusted. On a normal day, Blue would tug the connector out haphazardly. It never made much of a difference; the port it was plugged into wasn’t directly connected to any nerves, but now? Zero felt a rush of sensation from where hesitant fingers rubbed light circles around the conduit he slowly, gently jiggled to disconnect.

“Good boy,” purred Zero, reaching out to tuck away a strand of hair behind Blue’s ear. “Careful not to press too hard,” he continued, explaining slowly with simple language as if Blue wasn’t aware of how to take care of electrical equipment, “Or you could kriff up the subdermal plate.”

Blue glared up at Zero. He opened his mouth to complain about being talked down to before his hair was tangled in a mechanical fist and _yanked,_ jerking his head back suddenly. A sharp gasp escaped him, Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulped in a lungful of air and stared at Zero’s now-impassive faceplate with wide eyes. After a beat, his guard leaned in close and animated a jagged-toothed snarl splitting across his face, “Are you gonna behave, or not?”

“Yes, sir,” Blue breathed, and his hair was released and pet absently. His gaze returned to the knee port and, with trembling hands, he reached out to press his fingers into lean limbs coated in wiry, gold fur and wrapped seemingly haphazardly in machinery. He combed through tangles and rubbed away hard knots in muscle at the borders between organic and inorganic, acutely aware of the judging gaze aimed at him.

Once the leg was done, he hurriedly scanned through the datapad whose long, winding cable terminated into the base of Zero’s spine, where wires beneath the jumpsuit converged under a patch of furless skin. Blue let out a deep, shaky breath to center himself and stared as the screen displayed readouts at a breakneck pace. He nearly jumped again when the leg he previously worked kicked over his shoulder casually. Desperately, Blue looked up from his screen to see Zero idly examining his robotic arm, scraping off bits of grime.

There was a pause, and then the helmet slowly moved to stare directly _through_ him. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?” Blue fumbled with the datapad and stared back down at the numbers, belatedly recognizing the jump of signals causing extended neurotransmitter release. He’d be concerned if he didn’t recognize oxytocin—or whatever the gank equivalent was, he’d assigned the name for simplicity—coursing through Zero’s veins.

So he wasn’t totally kriffing up, then. He should have felt shame in the relief that made his body instantly melt, but instead he felt fuzzy and relaxed. The simplicity of the routine came back to him easily, with well-practiced gestures and keystrokes moving his free hand on autopilot.

It was an interesting transformation from Zero’s point of view. Truth be told, _he_ totally felt like he was totally kriffing up, with how stiff Blue looked. And then, the tenseness in the air dissipated at a wide-eyed glance at the datapad. His knitted brows relaxed, and his eyes looked a touch unfocused as he scanned outputs lazily.

There was a twinge of a disconnection and silence. Blue looked up at him with doe eyes, as if awaiting instruction. The end of the cable ported to his back was just out of Blue’s reach. Zero exaggerated a shrug before unhook his leg and bodily pulling Blue up, “Up n’ attem, kiddo.” There was the slightest twitch of annoyance in Blue’s posture, but he nonetheless stood and leaned over to pull the wire out and toss it to the side. He moved to stand back up but squawked as he was turned and pulled into Zero’s lap.

A flush lit up his face brilliantly and he froze, snug between Zero’s knees with their legs tangling together. He felt dwarfed by the body holding him in every way, in height and in weight and in muscle mass and—

“If you keep stopping, we’re going to be here all night,” Zero teased in a soft breath. Blue swallowed and pawed for the last pad laying on the console beside them. It displayed the status of the robotic arm, including a whole host of errors preventing the repulsor fist from firing. He bit his lip and frowned, tapping furiously and scrolling through to pinpoint the origin of the bug. 

He _didn’t_ jump when a pair of hands laid on his thighs, but an involuntary whimper left his lips before he could stop it. Blue studiously ignored the way his brightening blush spread to his ears, instead trying to (unsuccessfully) keep his attention on the flashes of red that reflected on his glasses. Once the hands slid up to the junction of his hips and thighs, though, he couldn’t suppress the urge to buck and dropped the datapad to the ground with a clatter. 

Cold metal shot up in a blur and the cybernetic arm was clutching his throat _just_ tight enough to make his breath shallow. His fingers twisted into the fabric of Zero’s jumpsuit with white knuckles and his legs fell open limply, the shock of adrenaline making his vision sharp and vibrant and he _moaned._ “Are you gonna keep getting distracted, buddy?” Zero admonished, deep and stern, “‘Cause you could’ve already been done by now, and it’s getting late.”

“N-no, sir,” Blue wheezed. His neck was released, and he slumped, weakly leaning over to the side over Zero’s thigh to clumsily swipe at the pad with the tips of his fingers. The slight purr against his back when he sat up made him shiver.

Despite the tremor in his hands, he began to type in lines of code to implement a fix. Zero’s hands resumed their respective places on Blue’s thigh, and the organic one slid underneath his shirt, lazily fondling the slightest hint of softness at his middle and up to cup his ribs. The minister felt so slight and fragile underneath his grip. Of course, as a politician, it wasn’t as if he had extensive combat training like a bounty hunter would. 

But. 

Watching him squirm and fuss from being manhandled was a stark reminder of how willingly he placed his trust in his bounty hunter, even though he could easily be broken under the arms that restrained him to the equally militarized, cybernetically enhanced body curving against his back. A pool of warmth settled in Zero’s stomach, not quite arousal but more akin to the feeling of waking up slow and languid on one of his rare days off.

Being groped was not exactly the best state to be in while coding sensitive material, but Blue wasn’t like the simpleton slicer criminals that tried to scrape through his extensive security protocols on the holo. It certainly took longer than usual with how Zero poked and prodded at even the tiniest patches of sensitive skin over the notch of his collarbone or the hollow of his hip. He bit his lower lip until it became red and swollen, and if he paused without reason there was a sting as his skin was pinched. Still, he was _mostly_ certain he restored functionality within acceptable—if unnecessarily tight by anyone else’s standards—limits.

“You should be good to go,” Blue yawned, surprising himself with how bleary he sounded. The Bluebird informed him of the late hour in the corner of his glasses with a blinking list of his impossibly packed schedule for the next day. He frowned at the chuckle in his ear, absently unplugging the pad and thumbing over the polished metal surface of the cybernetic arm.

Zero brought his free hand out from Blue’s now-rumpled shirt and lifted it to brush his knuckles against the soft underside of his ward’s jaw. Blue followed his movements with fluttering eyelids and a sigh. “You did good, but,” Zero murmured, “We could certainly do better next time, right?” His now-recalibrated robot hand gripped a _touch_ too hard, sinking slightly into the flesh of Blue’s thigh. The human in question wordlessly whined and nodded falteringly, brows cinching in a wince.

If it weren’t the dead of the night cycle, Zero probably would have thought his indolence was from defiance rather than exhaustion. He clicked his tongue, amused, and easily lifted Blue into a bridal carry. It normally wasn’t very easy to get an abnormally skinny human hopped up on a disproportionately enormous amount of caffeine to get a full six-to-eight-hours of sleep, but whatever headspace he’d managed to get Blue into made him loose and compliant for once.

The CO’s quarters on the Bluebird were ridiculously, unnecessarily luxurious, in Zero’s opinion. He’d hitched a ride on tons of ships in the past, both large and small, and had never seen a ship designed in such a way that the commanding officer slept in a room that essentially took up a fifth of the ship’s mass. He argued for something smaller, but Blue had looked offended by the very thought of having to give up any of the material comforts he was afforded as a spoiled kid born into old money.

He had to concede that it was easier to maneuver two people in the room with this much space, at least. Especially with two individuals that represented the top percentile of height for their species. _Especially_ when one of two said individuals outright refused to separate from the other, clinging like some sort of horrid, freckled parasite. Zero didn’t even know Blue possessed enough strength to hold onto him without support while totally awake, let alone lethargic.

“Buddy,” Zero started, edging his voice back into a normal, casual tone. His arms were flat against his sides and he had to stop himself from looking down or the chin of his helmet would whack the top of his charge’s head. “You’re gonna have to let go if you want to go to bed.” 

Somehow, Blue clung harder, mumbling into Zero’s shoulder almost too quietly to be heard, “Stay ‘ere.” The _tiniest_ bit of accent seeped into his speech and it was absolutely _adorable_ to Zero, almost alarmingly so. He ignored the heat of a flush on his face and animated an eye roll across his helmet out of habit. His arms spread out dramatically as he fell back onto the plush mattress, making him huff at the weight that bounced on his chest.

It wasn’t like Blue was unaware of what he was doing, and it _did_ occur to him that it was out-of-character, but he was starting to care less and less over the past few weeks. It wasn’t like he was never affectionate to Zero before, quite the opposite. He just normally had a taste for the grandiose, was all. Now, though, he was cozy and sleepy, and they were alone and Zero had seen him more vulnerable by now, so who gave a kark, really?

And if some weird feeling was making his heart jump into his throat? Well, he’d worry about that in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Anti's headcanon hour! 
> 
> I definitely think Zero's humanoid enough to have a similar neurotransmitter system to us but it's not exact. For simplicity Blue just comments all over code involved in his biological processes.
> 
> Also, I like the idea that Blue speaks Mando'a as his primary language due to his upbringing but learned to speak in a more dignified manner a little later in life, hence the mention of the accent. In my head it's a really weak Kiwi accent with just a touch of English. I know someone with a similar accent so they were my inspo.


End file.
